Date   : Fri, 26 Nov 2010 23:47:11 +0000
From   : pete@... (Pete Turnbull)
Subject: Kansas City Standard

Anders Carlsson wrote:

> Speaking of which, a while ago I stumbled across the Kansas City
> Standard for storing programs on tape. The Wikipedia entry made
> hints that Acorn BBC and Electron should have variations thereof.
> 
> While I haven't had any opportunity to research further, to which
> degree would it be possible to load data (text, probably not
> executable programs) from a foreign computer on the Acorns?

You'd have to deal with the block length, which is not defined by Kansas 
City format.  It's always 256 bytes on a Beeb, except for a possibly 
short last block.  You'd also have to deal with header information, if 
any; most systems put a header on each block but there's no standard for 
that either.  Lastly, if there's any error checking, it might be quite 
different from the CRC used by Acorn.  It might be a different CRC, or a 
simple checksum.

> I have a couple of other systems also listed on Wikipedia to use
> some variant of KCS, but apart from baud rate I'm unsure if they
> all use the same frequencies to encode data?

Yes, always the same frequencies.

The CUTS standard also uses the same 1200Hz and 2400Hz tones, but was 
designed from the outset to have standardised headers, block sizes, and 
checksums, notionally supporting 300 baud and 1200 baud but supposedly 
capable of handling up to 9600 (I never met anyone who claimed to be 
able to get that to work!).

-- 
Pete                                           Peter Turnbull
                                               Network Manager
                                               University of York